Our Nation's Moms Were Behind PRISM All Along [Satire]

In the latest shocking twist to the spectacle surrounding Edward Snowden and the NSA, America’s mothers, led by spokeswoman Kris Jenner, have claimed full and total responsibility for the NSA’s expansive civilian surveillance program, code named PRISM. Pressed for details, Jenner cited millennials’ “complete inability to remember to call their parents, for Pete’s sake.”

“I want to be very clear; we weighed the options. We have read multiple Facebooks. We tweeted with abandon, albeit over dial-up. One person even started a Xanga. It was to no avail.”

Unapologetic, Jenner continued, “Our actions prevented countless acts of poor nutrition, potentially affecting millions of citizens born with neither the motivation nor the follow-through to shop for groceries. Because of the decisive action of a brave few, at least two, maybe three of those said citizens will remember to do laundry in advance of their job interviews tomorrow, heaven help their prospective employers.”

According to documents leaked by Snowden, the PRISM program has its humble beginnings in an internal memo from Jan Robertson, a low-level analyst, to fellow analyst and ostensible BFF Jasmine Wallace. In the memo, Robertson muses that government resources might better be utilized to determine if her son, then a sophomore at Purdue University, was actually wearing the cat sweater she had knitted for him, or if he was, in Robertson’s words, “still nervous to wear it around girls.”

By the time cursory surveillance of the Robertson progeny revealed that, indeed, the cat sweater had snagged him a total hottie on a Ph.D. track, the powerful matriarchal faction within the famously secretive agency was tumbling headlong down the slippery slope of finally getting information on their adult children’s lives. Mere weeks into the program, enthusiastic analysts dubbed the initiative PRISM, citing both a love of rainbows and a frightening goal of complete “momniscience” by early 2015.

The violation of civil liberties hit its nadir in 2012 when Ron Paul himself, cowed by powerful mom interests, acquiesced to Mitt Romney’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination in exchange for information on what his son Rand really wanted for Christmas. The answer: jeans.

As per usual, the rest of the nation’s dads, President Obama notably included, had no idea what was going on the entire time.

As for the nation’s teens and young adults, a long road toward understanding and reconciliation remains.

“I always wondered why all of those reminders to call grandma and eat fiber showed up in my News Feed,” offered UNC-CH graduate student Eliot Marshall. “Like how did Zuckerberg know about my digestive struggle? That guy’s a genius,” he continued, still obviously in denial about the whole thing.

It is tempting to say that time will heal all wounds, but prominent pundits acknowledge the sheer absence of leverage for millennials on this generational issue. It seems that most of the under-30 demographic is not only disinterested in what moms are doing with their time, but actively screens entire conversations to avoid acknowledging what is going on in the lives of their forebears.

“Without checks and balances,” game theorist Melissa Ahmed opines, “we’re left with a classic ‘who’s watching the watchers’ dilemma. Frankly, listening to wiretaps of moms might be the only thing left on this Earth that could put millennials to sleep at a reasonable hour.”

No one knows for sure what the fallout of this revelation will be, and only time will tell if the stranglehold of the nagging-industrial complex on our government can ever truly be broken. Perhaps George Orwell didn’t get it right, but he was pretty darn close: Big Mother is watching you.

A former high school science teacher with a background in oceanography, I am interested in issues of human rights, environmental policy, and education. I am passionate about debating ideas in the public forum, and protecting freedom of speech within it. When I'm not working or writing for PolicyMic, I am also an avid reader, cook, and soccer player.
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